Myles MacBean, Vice President Disney Online Europe, spoke today at the Online TV and Video Forum in London, and mapped out Disney's role in the future of IPTV.
MacBean explained how Disney is very much one of the leading providers of video online, with its sites – including ABC and ESPN – garnering around 350 million visitors a month who look at 3 billion web pages.
It's these people, believes MacBean, who have control over how video online will be viewed, saying that: "Technology isn't king, neither is content. The consumer is king, when it comes to online."
Children are key
For Disney, however, it's not just any old consumer who is paving the way for how Disney presents its online portal, but children. And it's not only online video that the kids want from Disney's web pages.
MacBean explains: "It is clear what young consumers want out of our service – games, games, games… video, music, community and interaction.
"They also want personality: my content, my time, my place, my way."
MacBean also feels that the online generation that will revolutionise IPTV is only just appearing, explaining: "Children who grew up with PCs connected to the internet in their homes at age six or under, are the only generation who truly understand the potential of the internet."
The web isn't global
When TechRadar asked MacBean about most of Disney's exclusive online video being almost-exclusively US-based, he explained: "We like to think of the web as global, but it isn't.
"It's extremely difficult to balance the various copyright agreements on the internet, and we have to be careful not to mess with current agreements.
"We are still looking at IPTV as a 'horseless carriage'. We still see web video in the same way as analogue TV. This has to change."
